The 81-day standoff between the Montana Freemen and FBI agents concludes with the surrender of 16 remaining members of the anti-government group. This event represented a significant resolution of a tense domestic confrontation involving sovereign citizen activists.
The last of the fugitive “freemen” gathered in a quiet circle for a final few minutes of prayer and then surrendered two-by-two into the waiting arms of the FBI late Thursday, peacefully ending an 81-day standoff--one of the longest law enforcement sieges in U.S. history.
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Sixteen in all, the men and women rode in cars, pickup trucks and a Winnebago motor home to a cattle guard at the entrance to their compound, where a dozen FBI agents waited with two 15-passenger vans backed up to a gate. The freemen stepped out of their vehicles. They hugged each other.
Soundlessly they gathered and prayed. Finally, at 6:45 p.m. local time, with a surveillance plane circling overhead, their leader, Edwin Clark, approached the FBI and shook hands with an agent standing near the cattle guard. The sun broke through dark clouds shrouding the evening sky. Slowly, Clark returned to his people.
Then, two at a time, he led them off the compound and turned them over to the FBI. Each of the freemen clung to his arms as he walked them forward. After surrendering each pair, Clark turned, walked back to his group and then stepped forward with still another pair. There was no scuffling. Not a shot was fired.
The peaceful surrender contrasted sharply with the bloody resolution of two other sieges conducted by federal agents during the past four years, one near Waco, Texas, and the other at Ruby Ridge in Idaho. It seemed to vindicate the FBI’s new strategy of carefully calibrating pressure on fugitives who have been surrounded and are trying to avoid arrest.
Fourteen of the freemen were believed to be facing charges ranging from threatening a federal judge to being involved in check frauds totalling $1.8 million. The FBI drove them to the Yellowstone County jail in Billings, 175 miles away. The other two freemen were free to go, but the FBI said they would not be allowed to return to the compound.
No handcuffs were in sight as the freemen and the federal agents stepped aboard the two FBI passenger vans and a sedan. Some of the freemen wore cowboy hats. They sat tightly together, side by side, and stared straight ahead as the vehicles carried them 33 miles from the ranch to the small town of Jordan, over a rutted, teeth-rattling dirt road.